College Board Cancels One School's AP Scores After Cheating Scandal
A cheating scandal at one Southern California high school has prompted the College Board to invalidate the scores of 690 Advanced Placement exams. Now, hundreds of students from Trabuco Hills High School in Orange County are protesting the decision. The Los Angeles Times is calling the imbroglio "perhaps the most memorable in Southern California since 1982, when the scores of more than a dozen students in Jaime Escalante's AP calculus class at Garfield High School were invalidated because of suspected cheating. The students retook the exams and passed, and the events were later turned into the film Stand and Deliver."
The protesters are students who say they didn't cheat on the exams and who are worried about their college prospects if the scores are not made valid. They have formed a group on Facebook called "Justice for 375." The College Board and Educational Testing Services say there was rampant misconduct during the testing in May and have no intention of reinstating the scores. At least 10 students allegedly cheated on statistics and macroeconomics tests by exchanging text messages using cellphones. There was also little supervision while students took the tests, including proctors who were asleep.
A new round of testing has been scheduled for August. But that has done little to appease families who say they won't go down without a fight. Would anyone out there pay to see this embarrassing mess re-created for the big screen?
Tags: California | College Board
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Reader Comments
College Board Cancels Tests
These families' concern should be with the school officials who allowed proctors to not do their job. Even proctoring requires some training and instilling in these supervisors the notion of the importance of an honest assessment. The College Board cannot allow suspected misconduct and stand behind their product. I feel badly for the apparent few who did not cheat. What a tragedy for those students who must pay the ultimate price for those who so cavalierly depended on others to do their work.
College Board Cancels Tests
I am a College Advisor, and have run standardized tests at my high school. There is a sheet that gets filled out for College Board if anything out of the ordinary happens during tests. If students are found text messaging, their results are invalidated. The scores will have an impact on whether or not students receive college credit for that course. It will not have an impact on where the students get admitted. AP scores do not have anything to do with college admittance at most schools. Yes, there should be extensive training for proctors, but unfortunately, there is usually very little. For some reason, administrators assume that teachers, substitute teachers, and other school personnel know how to proctor. Hopefully, this will have an effect on testing procedures in the future. Based on their findings, College Board has the right to invalidate tests.
"The Educational Testing Service (ETS) has tried to defend cancelling 690 Advanced Placement test scores for about 380 Trabuco High Students by referring to its student/parent bulletin. The ETS argument fails because the bulletin did not disclose to students and parents the administrative rules and violations that led to revocation of the test results.
It seems uncontested that administrators failed their responsibility to properly supervise the tests, but fairness requires that others who were punished, the students and parents, had advance notice of the rules. That notice didn’t exist. "
-The Mission Viejo Dispatch
Clearly, what was done to these kids were clearly unjust and due to it many former seniors entering freshman year of college will not be able to get the credit they worked so hard for during the year. Most of the students, not few, were honest of cheating. Only 10 were officially caught, however, there is no saying how many more actually cheated that is pledging honesty...however, it is definitely the majority of the students that did NOT cheat. A punitive measure of this magnitude is excessive and unnecessary by the collegeboard and ETS. Although they are offering retakes the notice has not come in nearly in a timely fashion at all. In fact, from what I hear from Trabuco seniors is that some of those heading to college will not be able to retest due to the late notice of this situation. If tests are retaken in august, the results will not come in nearly on time for college freshman to enroll.
The Justice for 375 will not give up and will not go down without a fight for some kind of compromise.
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